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This study examined the role of an international Agency (USAID) and Democratic Election; A Prognosis to the role of Security Personnel in Nigerian 2015 Elections. USAID and other international Agencies have relentlessly assisted both the emerging and consolidating democracies such as Nigeria, in conducting free and fair elections via provision of some forms of technical assistance so as to achieve credible elections and ensure improved governance but in spite of all these, events and happenings from developed democracies and across the globe have shown that the vitality of election security to the credibility of elections cannot be ignored because the conduct of free and fair elections to a large extent depend on the security system available in the country. This study anchored on Elite theory propounded by Paredo and Gaetano with descriptive qualitative method of data collection and Content analysis. It discovered that the fact that consistently undermined democratic consolidation in Nigeria is the varying degrees and measures of electoral violence so it therefore recommends that impartial and unbiased security agencies should be recruited for each election in order to prevent the reoccurrence of electoral violence during each election.

Myanmar is currently faced with conflicts mainly considered as crimes against humanity that require resolution sooner or later. The conflict in Myanmar is closely linked to ethnicity, creating a cycle of violence that continues to escalate without any possibility of diminishing. The inability of the state to address ethnic minority grievances or provide adequate security to communities has created a literal arms race among minority groups. More action needs to be taken to finally resolve the situation and crisis unfolding in Myanmar, and that is where countries in Southeast Asia play a very important role for conflict resolution. This research was carried out using qualitative method with descriptive analysis regarding to the situation that occurred in Myanmar, especially regarding the Rohingya crisis and the Myanmar Military Coup which was the focus of the research. The escalation of the humanitarian conflict and the deprivation of democracy by the Myanmar people, requires joint handling in order to avoid further expansion of the conflict. In this case, neighboring countries such as Indonesia have an important role as a driver of mediation in regional forums to resolve conflicts in Myanmar. ASEAN, as a diplomatic platform in the Southeast Asian region, must be put forward and reach a consensus for finally intervening in the Myanmar conflict, which is taking more and more lives. The United Nations with the principle of responsibility to protect can also play a role in overcoming the conflict, considering that the conflict has resulted in crimes against humanity that cannot be tolerated.

The military is generally considered to act as a professional when it comes to retreating forces from military battleground or international conflict areas. At the same time recent national experiences with the withdrawal of national troops from international peacekeeping operations are filled with disappointments and crises. In this article the authors question the idea that these disappointments and crises are simply due to problems of reduced military competence or military morale. They argue that the military is still the alleged expert who knows how to perform military retreats and other military actions. At the same time they show that network-like decision-making structures that are inherent to the deployment of troops in international peacekeeping missions, have become a major obstacle for the military to act in its own right. The lessons that government can learn from the military experience are firstly, that decisions for national public cutbacks should be accompanied by a more in-depth (re)consideration of public (key) tasks than up to now was considered appropriate, and secondly, that more trust should be shown in the skills, knowledge and motivation of professionals to delineate and constrain the boundaries of their own fields of expertise.

Klep, Christ, Somalië, Rwanda, Srebrenica. De nasleep van drie ontspoorde vredesmissies (Dissertatie Utrecht 2008; Amsterdam: Boom, 2008, 385 blz., ISBN 978 90 8506 668 2)When the Home Front meets Foreign Parts. The Aftermath of Commissions of Inquiry into derailed Peace MissionsPeace Missions take place in difficult and volatile circumstances. It is therefore hardly surprising that some peace missions become 'derailed'. Christ Klep zooms in on three 'derailed' missions in his book and focuses on the value of Commissions of Inquiry which are subsequently set up as a result of public and political pressure. Do they succeed in revealing the 'how' and the 'why' of such derailments and – above all – identifying those who are responsible? Based on a broad spectrum of questions and extensive source materials, Klep concludes that 'the number of escape routes from the labyrinth of responsibility is practically infinite'; a clear message for all those taking part in international and domestic politics. It is here that the author skillfully and expertly succeeds: exposing the complex entanglement of domestic and foreign policy, even concerning events that sometimes happen away from the capital city.

Klep, Christ, Somalië, Rwanda, Srebrenica. De nasleep van drie ontspoorde vredesmissies (Dissertatie Utrecht 2008; Amsterdam: Boom, 2008, 385 blz., ISBN 978 90 8506 668 2).ResponseThe validity of my comparative approach (Somalia-Rwanda-Srebrenica) still stands, in my opinion. At the level of political responsibility and the process of coming to terms with events, the similarities are stronger than the differences. My estimation that the Inquiry reports were 'hijacked' by almost all of the stakeholders involved (especially the Canadian, Belgian and Dutch governments) is more of a matter of fact and a political reality than a reproach that ought to have legal implications. Finally, the question of how far the three governments that were involved learned lessons from the three affairs is difficult to answer. Was it not also the wider developments (for example, the switch from the 'blue' missions to the more robust 'green' missions) that compelled the lessons to be drawn out?

Global developments that are full of dynamics are marked by the emergence of interdependence between countries. Global developments are in line with the development of science and technology which causes countries to seem borderless. The blurring of boundaries between countries and the development of an increasingly dynamic environment are also accompanied by the development of increasingly broad and multidimensional threats. This global development is also marked by the emergence of new actors in international relations. The development of threats and increasing global issues that cannot be handled by the state alone have created a new phenomenon in the international relations order, namely global governance. Previously, the state was the sole actor in the order of international relations. However, with global governance, there is a new arrangement in the international relations system that accommodates all actors who play a role. This research will use a qualitative phenomenological method. The theory used in this research are global governance, defense diplomacy and international organization as a basis theory and concept, and also a security theory as supporting theory. In the end, we can see that the change of international order can bring the positive effect for countries in achieving their national goals and accomplish their national interests.

The subject of this study is the strategic cooperation of the permanent members in the Security Council in the period 1946 2000. Because of their right of veto the cooperation of the permanent members has a significant influence on the functioning of the Council. The most important aspects of the cooperation that were investigated are the intensity of the cooperation and the ef-fectiveness of this cooperation in preventing and ending wars. To investigate these aspects, for both the intensity and the effectiveness measuring instruments were constructed. These measuring instruments were based on comprehensive sets of so-called 'leading indicators' and statistical methods and techniques. The intensity of the cooperation increased gradually from 1946 until 1990 (the end of the Cold War). Then it started to increase rapidly until 1996. From 1996 a slight decrease can be discer-ned. The strong increase in the strategic cooperation of the permanent members in the security Council can be established in all the majors forms of cooperation in the Council: the numbers of adopted strategic resolutions and presidential statements, the numbers of employed means (like peacekeeping missions and enforcement actions) and the amounts of money that were spent on peacekeeping activities. Further it was established that the response times of the Council regarding potential and waged wars dropped significantly since the end of the Cold War. The effectiveness of the cooperation of the permanent members in the Council was, insofar this was measurable with the applied method, not good for many years, but after the Cold War a clear improvement can be discerned. This goes for the prevention of wars, as well as for post war peacebuilding and the ending of wars. Also the numbers of potential and waged wars in which the Council not intervened dropped significantly since the end of the Cold War, as well as the use of vetoes. The large number of potential and waged wars in which the Council did not intervene during the Cold War was nearly exclusively caused by 'non decisions' (the non placing of wars on the agenda), and not by the use of vetoes by permanent members, as is often assumed in literature. Further, a comparison of two phase classifications of the Cold War showed that the great powers, even when there are great tensions among them, are prepared to cooperate in the Security Council to resolve strategic matters, if they consider this in their interest. Analyses of the adopted strategic resolutions during the Cold War revealed that cooperation here was nearly exclusively limited to issues that were not core issues of the Cold War. From this it can be concluded that cooperation against third party states was a basis of cooperation of the great powers in the Security Council. Finally, the results of this study show clearly that the Security Council was regarded and used to a large extent by the permanent members in the period 1946 2000 as an instrument of foreign policy to pursue their national interests, and not as an instrument of the world community to prevent and end wars.

'Will the Netherlands be defended?' The debate about NATO's main lines of defence at the beginning of the 1950sAt the beginning of the 1950s, the Netherlands would not have been able to defend itself in the event of a Soviet attack. Despite the fact that NATO, under the leadership of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Eisenhower, and later General Ridgway, was in the process of rapidly building up its defences, it was still incapable of conducting a forward defence. The pivotal political and military issue in the short term centred on one question: Which areas in Western Europe could and should be kept and which not? Answers to this question exposed conflicting national interests and points of view, particularly those of the Dutch and the French. As it was taking a considerably long time to build up the Netherlands' defences, the Dutch government had very few trump cards to add weight to its demands. Indeed, in the summer of 1952, when Parliament asked to be given a precise account of how the Dutch defences were progressing, the government was practically boxed into a corner.

The central question of this dissertation is what role national identity has played in the interdepartmental policy field of international cultural policy (ICP) in the Netherlands between 1970 and 2012. In four chapters I analyse the history of ICP and the related political debate, using a theoretical framework consisting of the main concepts of a Discourse Historic Analysis (critique, ideology, and power), and tensions within the discourses on ICP and national identity. The role of national identity in the first period (1970-1986) is characterized as 'cultural nationalism'. Culture plays an important role in distinguishing the nation state from the rest of the world, and due to the decreasing autonomy in the field of economics and politics culture is considered (by some) to be the last bearer of the national identity. The debates focus on the question whether or not the government has a role in (actively) protecting that identity. The publication of the report "Culture without borders" by the Scientific Council for Government Policy marks the beginning of the second period (1987-1996). Gradually the primacy of the policy shifts from foreign to cultural policy, and attempts are made to combine within ICP the growing cultural diversity of the Dutch society with the uniting role of a national identity. Therefore the role of national identity is characterized as 'multiculturalism'. Extra funding for international cultural activities in 1997 marks the beginning of the third period (1997-2006), in which the role of national identity is characterized as 'cultural relativism'. The relationship between culture and the nation becomes more loose, and cultural activities abroad no longer seem to represent the nation's identity. This approach in ICP contrasts strongly with the growing discontent and heated public and political debate on national identity. Characteristic for the fourth period (2007-2012) is the return to the primacy of foreign policy and the focus on diplomatic and economic goals. Culture is treated as a ...

This thesis is about International Medical Graduates or foreign doctors, trained outside the European Economic Area, who settle permanently in the Netherlands. From the early nineties the number of foreign doctors residing in the Netherlands either as refugees or as partners/spouses of Dutch citizens has risen steadily. Foreign doctors who wish to practise medicine in the Netherlands must obtain a declaration of professional competence, issued by the Department of Public Health, Welfare and Sports (VWS). A considerable number of foreign doctors received negative decisions by the Health Department. They were not allowed to practise medicine in the Netherlands. As a result, from the mid nineties, a growing number of foreign doctors applied to the medical faculties for admission as medical students in order to obtain a Dutch medical degree. Therefore, in 1995, it was decided to institute the Committee Influx Foreign Doctors (CIBA), a central placing committee. Between 1996 and 2007 the CIBA has processed over a 1000 admission requests. Until 2002, in spite of the imminent shortage of doctors, the Department of Health had done little to enhance the use of the expertise brought in by the foreign doctors for the benefit of Dutch society. The focus of this investigation has been: 1. How is it guaranteed that foreign doctors meet the medical quality standards (knowledge, skills, attitude), or how is the assessment of these qualities measured. And 2. After obtaining permanent residency in the Netherlands, do foreign doctors have access to the profession for which they had qualified before in their country of origin or another non-EEA country? Late 2001 the Department of Health and the medical schools were stimulated to cooperate in order to improve the additional training programmes for foreign doctors. It led to the new assessement procedure for foreign doctors that came into force in December 2005. This thesis contains two reports on the medical careers of foreign doctors. These investigations showed that nearly all ...

The Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0) is taking shape and has a strong impact on all areas of social life. For the state administration, the IR4.0 creates many opportunities as well as challenges that require managers to promptly grasp to have appropriate orientations and solutions, to perfect the state administration, to meet the requirements of national development. On the basis of analyzing the positive effects and challenges of IR4.0 on the reform of the state administration, the article proposes a number of recommendations: actively improve the institutional system of the administration, create a legal corridor for the development of industries and fields; promote the application of modern technological achievements to the management activities of administrative agencies; actively, proactively build and improve the qualifications and capacity of civil servants. Thereby, it will continue to perfect the state administration, and meet the requirements of IR4.0.

Why did the Dutch hold on to Western New Guinea, one of the many territories that constituted the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia), when the colony became independent in 1949? This thesis argues against the traditional explanation that it was due to a singular Dutch 'decolonization trauma': an inability to let go of the glorious colonial past, combined with resentment against Indonesian nationalist leaders such as Sukarno. It shows that historians have overstated the importance of emotions in Dutch colonial policy-making and diplomacy after 1949, mainly because of their narrow scope of analysis, which has traditionally been restricted to trilateral relations between the Netherlands, independent Indonesia (which wanted to incorporate Western New Guinea, if need be with military means) and the allegedly 'anti-colonial' United States. This thesis situates Dutch decision-making in the Western New Guinea Crisis in a much wider network, incorporating the colonial policy, diplomacy and perception of other Western powers such as Britain, France, Australia, Belgium and Portugal between 1930 and 1962. It is argued that, when viewed within this network and its discourse, the Dutch decision to retain Western New Guinea is best explained with rational actor theory. The decision was inspired not so much by emotions as by cost-benefit analyses, which included the possibility of transferring the territory to a new Indonesian regime—which the Dutch expected to be more forthcoming to the interests of the Papuans, the native inhabitants of Western New Guinea, and the Dutch (economic) interests in Indonesia than the regime headed by Sukarno. Research into hitherto neglected French, Belgian, British and Dutch archives also shows that the Netherlands could count on much more support for its New Guinea policy from its Western allies—including the US—than traditional historiography suggests. It remains true that the United States forced the Netherlands to hand over Western New Guinea to Indonesia in 1962, but the Kennedy ...

Dutch-American relations in the post-war period have been inexorably intertwined with the Cold War. In the course of the 1960s the East-West struggle entered a new phase with the beginning of a period of détente, which had important consequences for the Dutch-American relationship. In this dissertation, which focuses on the governmental level, the following issues are dealt with: firstly, to what extent was the relationship affected by the complicating developments that took place in the years 1969-1976? Secondly, how did Dutch and American policy makers view the relationship? Finally, what did the asymmetry in the relationship mean and were the Dutch able to exert any influence? When taking into account both international and domestic factors, the picture that emerges is one of both change and continuity. What makes the period concerned stand out is the fact that the Atlantic Alliance was at a point where a redefinition of the common goals seemed unavoidable. Security concerns and preserving the American dominant position in the international arena were the foremost concerns of President Nixon and NSC-advisor Kissinger. These ideas clashed with those of Dutch politicians of for instance the Labour Party who wanted détente, an active human rights policy and development cooperation to be part of the Atlantic foreign policy agenda. The American embassy in The Hague was aware of these changes: it noticed a turn to the left in Dutch society and the political landscape. The Dutch cabinets in the period concerned faced domestic pressure to take a more critical stance towards the United States, where the Nixon administration faced problems concerning its image and credibility because of the Vietnam war and the Watergate scandal. On the other hand, unmistakable signs of continuity in the Dutch-American relationship were present. The Dutch governments in the years concerned did not turn away from Atlantic cooperation, as the Netherlands remained dependent on the American military commitment to Western Europe. Détente was ...

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is previously not a homogenous model, nor a school or a paradigm, but at most a shared respective in doing linguistics, semantics, or discourse analysis. The objective of CDA is to perceive language use as social practice. The researchers in this paper have done this at the 58th session of the UN General assembly, New York. The theoretical framework used for the analysis is Fairclough's model, 1992. This research paper has analysed the data qualitatively. This research work has explained and clarified the intellectual and invulnerable strategies, ideologies of President Musharraf, Pakistani president for global, political, economic, social and cultural development not only for his own country but for the entire world, especially developing countries. CDA of G-P-M speech shows that his motto is peace, security and development of human rights, implementation of international law, social justice for everyone and multilateral diplomacy by the support of the war on terror and cooperation with the international community. Pervaiz Musharaf has presented a positive and soft image of Pakistan.

Between 1949 and 1962 the Netherlands renounced its sovereignty over most of its overseas territories. Nevertheless, during the entire period of the Cold War, the Royal Netherlands Navy (RNLN) stood by its point of view that it had a global task to fulfil. This military-naval deployment, outside the NATO treaty area during and shortly after the Cold War in relation to the structural global ambitions of the Royal Netherlands Navy's leadership, is the central theme of this study. This theme is analysed on the basis of theories and an understanding of multinational fleet operations after 1945 and Dutch policy regarding naval operations outside the NATO treaty area, but above all through regional case studies (Korean War 1950-1955, operations around the Arabian peninsula 1984-2000, and in the Adriatic Sea and Montenegrin waters 1992-2001). These case studies were examined by addressing the following central questions: to what extent did these missions involve a traditional approach to Dutch foreign policy? To what extent did the Navy's leadership influence the political-strategic decision-making on these out-of-area operations? To what extent were Dutch tasks and operations different from those of coalition partners, specifically those of the British Royal Navy, which the Royal Netherlands Navy considered to be its 'sister navy'? To what extent did the existing national and international perceptions of the RNLN influence Dutch decision-making on these missions, and how much did the participation in multinational fleet operations subsequently contribute to the objectives the Dutch government had in mind? In all the three case studies, the national and international perception of the Netherlands as a maritime nation and the ability to deploy high-quality navy units were taken into account in the Dutch government's decision-making regarding the RNLN participation in multinational fleet operations. The missions always received international, and especially British and American, appreciation and respect. The fact that ...